by Conrad Aiken
“Trips to New York—!”
“Yes, trips to New York. And about half the week at home, and most of that shut up in the studio—but what about me, the rest of the time? Does it ever occur to you that people talk?”
“How wonderful.”
“It’s not wonderful at all. It’s very natural.”
“Well? And what do they talk about?”
“They begin by pitying me. Just like George and Mabel. Oh, if you’d known the times Mabel has asked me if I didn’t get lonely—”
“Yes—I know—one of those sweet little services that women love to do for each other!”
“And then, because they’re afraid of showing their pity, if they’re nice, and embarrassed by it, they begin to stay away. Do you realize that nowadays, when you’re in town, George and Mabel practically never come to see me? Or anybody else, for that matter? Oh, I’m kept in cold storage, all right. They come to see me when you’re here, but apparently it’s beginning to be thought not quite respectable to call on me when I’m alone. Or as if it wasn’t respectable for me to be left alone.”
“Aren’t you being just a little imaginative?”
“Oh, no. You ask your friend George—ask your friend Paul, too. If you can get an honest answer out of them, which I doubt! The truth is, they’re ashamed for you. And the neighbors, too—they shun me as if I were the plague. Even Mrs. Murphy is always hinting, saying it’s such a pity, isn’t it, that my husband has to be away so much, as if it implied either that there was something wrong with you, or something terribly wrong with me!”
“Yes. And what else?”
“Well—naturally, it all leads to gossip.”
“Oh. I see. How nice.”
“It isn’t at all nice.”
“Well, let’s hear it!”
“They think—”
“Who thinks?”
“They all do.”
“Oh. And they all told you?”
“No. It’s not necessary to go into that!”
“All right, let’s have the gossip.”
“They think, when you go to town, or to New York—”
“New York! I haven’t been there for six months!”
“No matter. When you go to town—when you go away—they think you wouldn’t go so much, or stay so long, if there weren’t some other reason. Some reason other than your work. They think you’re having an affair. They can’t imagine that you wouldn’t have arranged things better—so as to spare me so much work and so much loneliness—if there weren’t some other reason.”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
“By god, I—and who are the saintly people who told you this?”
“Would any useful purpose be served by telling you?”
“They ought to be faced with it, the damned mischief-makers—and I suppose, of course, you didn’t—!”
“On the contrary, I did!”
“You shouldn’t have permitted them to raise the thing at all.”
“How could I help it? They merely said, besides, what everybody else is thinking. So what does it matter!”
“Any loyal wife can prevent that sort of thing being said to her. You know that as well as I do. The truth is you’ve been looking for causes of complaint—”
“I have not!”
“—for the past six months. Oh, yes, you have. And if you can pick up a dirty little piece of gossip to fling in my face—”
“I did nothing of the sort. I’ve done nothing of the sort.”
“It looks very like it, doesn’t it? You complain about my friends, even compel me to drop them, you complain about my work, about our poverty, you complain about living in the country, you complain even because you have to do a little work yourself—”
“A little work! You try doing a morning’s washing!”
“—and now you complain because the neighbors gossip. Good god, Enid, what next? Oh, yes, and the schools, too—I’d forgotten about that—the schools aren’t good enough for Buzzer, and the children speak with simply atrocious accents! Is there anything else, while we’re on the subject? We might as well get right down to it. And when you’ve had your say, maybe I’ll have mine.”
“I’ve got plenty to say—I’ve had plenty to say—if you’d ever take the trouble to listen. And when I say listen, I mean listen. But I might as well be living alone, living in a vacuum, as far as getting any understanding is concerned—!”
“Ah, the old classic. So I don’t understand you any more.”
“If you even paid me as much attention as you pay to Buzzer—or gave me a little of the kind of imaginative sympathy you give to her—”
“Good god almighty, do you mean to say you’re going to be so low as to be jealous of your own child—?”
“It isn’t jealousy. I wouldn’t take it away from Buzzer, it’s very good for her, and it’s very lovely, too, it’s the nicest thing about you—but why couldn’t you give a little of it to me?”
“As if I hadn’t! And why the devil should I? What in hell do you give me? What? You do nothing but interfere with my life, my work, my career, my friends—the whole blasted business—and then you come running to me for understanding! Why don’t you run to your mother—it seems to be what you need!”
“Perhaps I will!”
“She ought to understand you—you get more like her every day! You’re turning into a complete prig.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. A damned prig.”
“If you’re going to have recourse to swearing, simply—”
She had suddenly flushed, the high cheekbones were beautifully flushed, the green eyes widened as if deliberately for contempt, and she turned abruptly and went out, went through the hall and into the studio. He heard the two-toned squeak of the door, the clink of the tongs in the fireplace, the soft rustling thud of a pine log on to the other logs in the fire—that familiar, scaly, bark-scabbing sound, the red bark flaking and peeling—and he waited then for the creak of her wicker chair, but none came. She must be standing—she must simply be standing there—looking at the fire, looking out of the window—looking even at his pictures? Not likely! But standing in the intensity of her thought, standing and waiting. Yes—and implying too, by her departure on that particular note, that it was New Bedford she was thinking of, and the now twice-threatened return to her mother. Good god, how extraordinary, how simply grotesque—that actually, after all this time, they should now find themselves in this situation! Home and mother—how preposterous! He struck a chord at random, and looked up again at the Japanese print, in the dim candlelight. But that business of the “gossip,” and so ridiculously just now, as the affair with Nora was coming to an end, and especially in view of the fact that it had begun coming to an end precisely because they had decided to move into the country, to live in this village—how ironically and infuriatingly unfair that was, how typically silly an injustice! And Ee herself apparently disbelieving it—
But did she?
Or had it been a skillful tactical bit of probing?
No, probably not. But just the same the mere suggestion of a suspicion—whether hers, or George’s and Mabel’s, or Mrs. Murphy’s—shook him and made him angry; and all the more so because while in fact it was right—or partly—in principle it was wrong. Yes, there was something definitely mean about it, that was it—that they should suspect him of going to town—or even to New York, good heavens—in pursuance of a love affair; and abandoning poor Enid for that reason; when in truth the very opposite was the case, and it was Nora who had been abandoned—this was simply a piece of wanton invention and mischief-making. It was sickening. And without a shred of evidence or motive for it, either! His mere absences had led their imaginations to this, that was all—and the absences had been innocent. Not only innocent, but hard work, too, by god, and increasingly at the cost of what he had hoped to make his career! Yes, this was a genuine meanness, and of a sort that surprised him in George and Mabel. So that was the way their
minds worked. Ah—and there was human nature for you, again—always suspect the worst, and whisper it where it will do the most good! By all means. And by all means separate a wife from her husband if you can, it’s very likely the kindest thing you can do! And drive the idealists, like Jim Connor, out of town—and forget the Miss Twitchells till they are dead.…
He started to strike a chord, but decided not to, and allowed his hands to lie relaxed on the keys. It would be better to be silent. Yes. Her silence in the studio, his silence in the dining room—and the battlefront, of course, halfway between, in the hall. But the finest irony of all, and the most infuriating part of the whole thing—if it hadn’t also been really damned funny—was that after having an affair, and in entire and successful secrecy, he should now be suspected when he was innocent. It was ridiculous, it made him feel helpless. In fact, what he really wanted to do was to go straight to them and tell them about it. “Look here, you blankety-blank fools and idiots, you low-minded suspicious imbeciles—do you think if I ever did have an affair I’d conduct it in such a way that simpletons like yourselves would entertain even the shadowiest ghost of a suspicion of it? Of course not. As is proved by the fact that when I was living in Boston I did have an affair, which none of you ever guessed for one minute. And now, you poor prunes, when I merely go to town three days a week, to work, your feculent little fancies have nothing better to do than this! Go crawl into a cesspool, will you? where you belong. Or into one of Mr. Will Pepoon’s bags!”
The visual image amused him, he half-smiled, involuntarily struck a note on the piano, then got up and went down into the rain-sounding kitchen for a glass of water. Amusing—yes! But the whole thing was now too complex, too difficult—and the feeling of insecurity, too, was beginning to be oppressive. Unfair, that he should have to bear the extra burden, just now, along with all this, of knowing about little Miss Twitchell—unfair, also, that into the same day should have come not only Nora’s letter, but that subtly disturbing dream as well. Why in god’s name had they had to quarrel now, when—
When what?
He averted his eyes from the thought, from the memory of the walk with Buzzer, in which the sun-bright fog and the queer dream and the letter had all been so deliciously and magically woven together. It was as if he had winced; and instead he turned the cold water tap quickly on and off several times, in the kitchen sink, to watch the indicator in the dial drop down and then shoot up again. Twenty-eight. He could go out and start the engine, of course, and run it for five minutes, just to test it—but actually there was water enough for two days. And besides, there was the “tempest,” Ratio’s tempest, it was raining. Tempest! These absurd Cape Codders! Like calling the ceiling the “wall,” and the walls “side-walls.”
He turned down the little fishtail of yellow flame in the reflector lamp on its shelf behind the stove, walked slowly into the dining room, and blew out the candle on the piano; then proceeded, slowly again, his hands in his pockets, to the studio. It was exactly as he had foreseen. Enid was standing—simply standing—in the middle of the room, behind her wicker chair. Her fists were on her hips, and she was facing, but not looking at, the fire—the narrowed eyes were looking downward at nothing. For a second they lifted to meet his—a curious and remote look, as if it came from far beneath, far below, quickly and blindly tipped upward and then tipped down again. There was something doll-like in the movement, something inhuman and mechanical, but also pathetic. Then, addressing the fire, she said slowly:
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“That’s up to you!”
“Why is it up to me?”
“You started the whole thing, it’s all your creation, your action, your aggression—I haven’t done anything—”
“You persist in that, don’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“I wish you could see that my aggression, as you call it—”
“Oh, call it anything you like!”
“Will you let me finish?—is simply a symptom. Of the deeper grievances that I’ve tried to tell you about, and that you won’t face. When I try to talk to you about them, you merely take to abuse and swearing.”
“What nonsense!”
“It’s true. As just now when I presumed to suggest that a little of your imaginative sympathy with Buzzer might well come to me—and all you could do was accuse me of jealousy.”
“And wasn’t it?”
“No!”
“Oh. I beg your pardon.”
“And besides, what you were really doing, was evading the point. Exactly as you always do. You didn’t want to face the fact that you don’t any longer give me that kind of imaginative sympathy. Do you.”
“I wasn’t aware of it. Perhaps I don’t. But if I don’t, is it any wonder? You don’t make yourself very attractive when you do this sort of thing, you know—you can’t drive me with a whip and then expect me to come to you with imaginative sympathy! Good god, I never heard anything so idiotic. Yes, and let me tell you another thing, while we’re on the subject—one that I wouldn’t have supposed a woman would ever have to be told by a man, either—and that is this: the one thing you cannot do in a marriage is demand love, or understanding, or sympathy, or whatever you want to call it, at the point of a pistol. You cannot do that. It’s fatal. There is nothing so calculated to freeze every spark of feeling—the mere demanding of it kills it. Feelings can’t be probed and bullied like that, you’ve got to leave them alone. And it’s bad enough, by god, to have you make the mistake—without my then having to explain it to you! Where does that leave me? A hell of a long way off, I’m afraid.”
“You’re very clever, aren’t you?”
“There’s nothing clever about it—it’s the unfortunate truth.”
“I see. So if I’m unhappy, of course it’s a mistake to say so. I mustn’t complain, on the penalty of making things still worse by alienating you. It’s a very ingenious little system, isn’t it? Oh, very. I’m just supposed to eat my heart out in silence. And if I hate this life here and hate all these people and hate being alone so much and hate the work and the dirt and the dishes and the everlasting social drabness and boredom of it, not to mention only seeing you half the week, and even then being pushed off by you because you want to work—”
“Go on!”
“I will go on. If I hate all this until I’m sick, and feel wretched day in and day out of the days on end when I’m alone, worrying about the money and how to make ends meet, or to keep up appearances, I’m just expected by you to say nothing. Why? Why? What do I get out of it? Oh, I know, all that nonsense of yours about plain living and high thinking, about living the natural and honest life of our Pilgrim ancestors, and being independent—but it’s no good for a woman, I can’t stand it much longer, I’m being starved, I warn you, Timothy.”
“I see. So it’s like that. You won’t stick to your bargain.”
“There was no bargain.”
“There was an agreement.”
“An agreement to try it, yes!”
“And certainly for a longer period than this. Long enough for me to see how my own work would go, to see what I could do.”
“But what have you done? Nothing.”
“Nothing! That’s what you always say, isn’t it? The truth is, and for me it’s a damned bitter truth, that you never even bother to look at my work, you don’t take any longer the slightest interest in it, except insofar as it might make some money, you don’t know what I’m doing. Things have changed a lot in five years, haven’t they? By god, yes. It makes me laugh. I can remember when you used to ask to see what I was doing, in the first year or two—and when we were engaged you could think of nothing else. But nowadays all I get from you is the old parrot cry of why not do portraits, why not do portraits—”
“Well, I’m sorry—”
“Sorry! Good god almighty.”
“Besides, if you’re not altogether sure of yourself, how can you expect me to be sure of you?”
<
br /> “You were sure enough when we were engaged, weren’t you?”
“Yes, yes—I was. But don’t forget that we were both very young.”
“Of course! And now we’re grown up, aren’t we? And must put away these childish things—is that it? I suppose you think my career is finished? I suppose you think I ought to give it up entirely, and do nothing but teach—is that it? Come on, let’s hear you say it!”
“Will you please stop twisting my words? I merely meant that it was natural enough, when we were both young, that we should feel confident.”
“Ah. And natural enough now that we should be disillusioned. You are disillusioned, aren’t you?”
“No—but disappointed! It hasn’t seemed to me—”
“Yes, go on, let’s have it.”
“—that your work has matured much. It seems to me to be still young and unformed.”
“Oh, yes, I know—adolescent. Why not stick to your favorite word!”
“In a way, yes.”
“Gosh, what a comfort that is! Unformed and adolescent—which I suppose by implication applies to me too. After eight years of work and sweat and passion—by god, it’s too funny. It’s funny either way—funny as the devil if you’re right, funny as hell if you’re wrong. And if Karl sees power in it, well, then, Karl is adolescent too. We’re all adolescent, the whole lot of us—which is just what you’ve really been maintaining all along—as, of course, so conspicuously in the Jim Connor episode!”
“Candidly, yes!”
“Very well, then, Ee—we’ve come to a definite parting of the ways. That’s flat. From now on, my work will be private. I don’t want you to know a thing about it, or to inquire about it, or to look at it. It’s going to be none of your damned business. If you have no faith in it, as has become increasingly clear, then you can have no part in it. And all the more so because of the very fact that I do myself feel unsure about it. It’s bad enough to have to fight my own self-doubts, but I can’t have an additional enemy in my own house—and that’s what you’ve become. So from now on, as far as my career is concerned, I’m going my own way.”